The present invention relates in general to a method for an optimized camera position finding for systems with optical character recognition. Furthermore, in more detail, the present invention relates to a method for supporting camera based services using a device with an integrated camera, in particular a portable communication device with an integrated camera for taking an image of a page with significant data, in particular with text data in order to recognize the significant data in an automatic way.
Generally speaking, the direction respectively the alignment of the camera sensor with the significant data, in particular text data, is of importance in order to achieve a good automatic recognition e.g. for an optical character recognition (OCR) for text, which is quite sensitive for disalignments. For finding a good camera position with sufficient alignment between the camera sensor and the significant data, in particular text data, it is necessary for the user bringing the camera into a sufficiently good position and to get a fast feedback of the degree of alignment and disalignment, respectively.
Portable communication devices are widely used in daily life by users wishing to perform communication in an easy manner and at every time independent of any fixedly installed communication terminals. Nowadays such portable communication devices offer integrated camera sensors and a great number of services including WAP service and the like. If a user wants to use a WAP service or the like then he has to input several data related to the WAP service he/she wishes, so it is often troublesome to input all these data using the numeric keypad. Accordingly, it becomes obvious to use the camera with image data recognition, OCR means or the like in the portable communication devices in the future. But in order to get a sufficient OCR quality the camera must be in alignment with the significant data to be detected, in particular with text data. To achieve the latter known systems have relatively slow feedback trying to bring the camera into a sufficient good position. In particular, visually impaired persons have problems correcting such a camera system for achieving proper alignment with the significant data to be recognized, inasmuch as visually impaired persons cannot see indications on a little display screen or have difficulty following acoustical instructions having additional delays until they are output, so that the correction of the camera alignment can only be made in slow and delayed steps.
Therefore, it is an objective of the present invention to provide for a method for aligning a camera sensor to a significant data to be recognized which avoids the shortcomings of the prior art and provides for a fast feedback in order to allow to a user a proper alignment of the camera sensor to the significant data contained in an image.
In the framework of the above object it is an additional object of the present invention to provide for a feedback for proper alignment of the camera sensor to the significant data contained in an image in a manner easily discernible for a user, in particular a visually impaired user.